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Daniel_Stuckey writes with a snippet from his piece at Vice: "I did some calculations in Excel, using independence dates provided on About.com, and found the average age of a country is about 158.78 years old. Now, before anyone throws a tizzy about what makes a country a country, about nations, tribes, civilizations, ethnic categories, or about my makeshift methodology, keep in mind, I simply assessed 195 countries based on their political sovereignty. That is the occasion we're celebrating today, right?"

Given that this is America's 237'th birthday, which make us 78.22 years older than the average (49.26%), should they change the name of the magazine from "The New Republic" to "The Somewhat-Older-Than-Average Republic"?

You inadvertently put your finger on the point of this article: yet another "see, us Americans are better than most countries." But the more the Americans go on and on about how much better they are proves the point of how immature they are, like the 12 year old who insists his dad can beat anybody else's dad.

You inadvertently put your finger on the point of this article: yet another "see, us Americans are better than most countries." But the more the Americans go on and on about how much better they are proves the point of how immature they are, like the 12 year old who insists his dad can beat anybody else's dad.

The 17th Amendment changes the US government vis-à-vis federalism, but doesn't make it any less a republic. You could eliminate the states and federalism entirely and still have a republic. Many countries, such as France, have such an arrangement.

That's an incredibly restrictive definition of "Republic." It's also very odd. The 17th says we directly vote for Senators, instead of having them appointed by the states. I have never heard of a definition of Republic which hinged on whether a single House of the Legislature was appointed or elected.

The general definition of republic is any state that has a non-hereditary Head-of-State. That's why France, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Iraq, Communist China, Iran etc. are Republics despite vastly different forms of government.

A cursory look at the Wikipedia article indicates that Egypt has spent time under the rule of a few empires here and there over history, but it and Greece have both been their own societies for several thousand years in spite of this. I figure that both countries are closer to the age of China than they're listed...but that's just me.

...or the fact that France was occupied by the Germans during WWII. The three year occupation of Sweden by the Danes during a war in the 1520:s, on the other hand, is apparently enough to cut Sweden's age down to 490 years.

Something which by the way wouldn't bother a Swede if it wasn't for the fact that the blasted Danes are listed at 1048 years.;-)

It looks like his choice of independence year in these cases is based on what the people in that country say.

Swedes say they were conquered by Denmark, and became independent in 1523, therefore that is the year that gets entered on the spreadsheet. The French don't recognize Petain's government as legitimate, therefore the slightly-longer German occupation of France during WW2 doesn't count as France losing it's independence.

The French actually have a legal point. For the entire time they were occupied in the homeland de Gaulle had troops under his command throughout their Empire.

While it is true that 1523 is celebrated as a year of independence, I don't think you could say the Swedes recognise Christian II as a legitimate ruler either (even more so than Petain). Christian II started his reign in Sweden by massacring about a hundred Swedish nobility in what is known as the Stockholm blood bath [wikipedia.org], which resulted in a deep-rooted hatred between Swedes and Danes that lasted for several hundreds of years thereafter. In Sweden, Christian II carries the epithet "the Tyrant" to this day.

Yeah, but if were to walk into Stockholm in 1250 and say hi to Birger Jarl and ask him what country you were in, what do you think he would have said?
Not "Danmark" or "Kalmarunionen" or something like that, I can guarantee you.

A lot of the "independence" dates for European countries are really arbitrary, because they just gradually grew into place.

Equally idiotic is calling the Koreas "68 years old". So what the hell was there before 1945? Or how about year 1000?

During WW1 Egypt was ruled by a Khedive who was technically a vassal of the British Monarch. The Khedive was actually originally an Ottoman vassal, but in the late 19th the Egyptians decided to join an Empire that didn't suck and switched allegiances. In 1922 the Egyptians became independent of the Brits and the Khedive promoted himself to King.

Indeed, there are a lot of countries that have been sovereign nations at various discontinuous periods in history, with varying degrees of continuity between those periods. Iceland was independent for a few centuries at the beginning of the previous milennium before merging with Norway again, and counts its legislature as continuous since that time, but the map only counts its most recent independence. On the other hand, France is listed as having been independent since the end of the rule of Charlemagne, despite having changed types of government several times since then and being conquered by Germany in World War II.

A cursory look at the Wikipedia article indicates that Egypt has spent time under the rule of a few empires here and there over history, but it and Greece have both been their own societies for several thousand years in spite of this. I figure that both countries are closer to the age of China than they're listed...but that's just me.

But China is wrong too. The Ming Dynasty was conquered by the Manchu Empire in 1644 which gradually morphed into the Qing Dynasty. So no more than 369 years.

China before 1950 did not include Tibet.

It could even be argued that modern China's sovereignty was not recognized until 1971 when the UN recognized the PRC as the legitimate ruler of China.

But that's not the Chinese take on the situation. The Chinese take is that all land currently owned by the PRC (and some more, like Taiwan) has always rightfully belonged to the legitimate government of China. Sometimes the various bits of China have disagreed about who is the rightful legitimate government (ie: the rise of the Manchus, Tibet in the 50s), but it's all always been China.

I don't entirely agree with that take on the situation, but the standard this guy is using for his list is what does the go

Here's what you don't get:He's not talking about existence as a culture, he's talking about being recognized as an independent nation-state.

Germany, for example, did not actually exist as a nation-state prior to the Prussian defeat of the Hapsburgs in the Austro-Prussian War, and the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War a few years after that. What existed were hundreds of feuding statelets that all spoke German.

The Greeks existed as a culture, but the last independent Greek state had been conquered by the Ottomans in the 15th century.

The Italians were in exactly the same boat as the Germans. There were the Kings of the Two Sicilies and Piedmont, the Pope, a Grand Duke of Tuscony, Hapsburgs in Venice, and several smaller states that were absorbed by Piedmont prior to unification.

Poland was divided between three Empires at the end of the 18th. Officially the Czar was Polish Head of State, but he didn't give the Poles any autonomy, and ran his bit of Poland as if it was merely another Oblast of Russia, so the Poles don;t count that as independence.

Which is why the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied(Deutschland über alles) is horribly misunderstood. It was composed to commemorate the CULTURAL unity. Not the NATIONAL one. There was a bit of a civil war in 1848 in bits of Germany to achieve that but it sort of...fizzled. When the king of Prussia was first offered the position of Emperor by the people he flatly refused it as a "pig's crown". The people could in his understanding not choose their king. That was up to god. Who it turned out to live in France. Versailles to be precise.
Which kind of highlights the huge difference between mainland European monarchy and the one in England. England had a regular parliament of sorts since the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 even if it was only used to levy taxes without too much of a revolt. And every monarch who went against it met a bad end afterwards. Except Henry VIII. Who propably was the only absolutistic(ish) monarch since William the Bastard's line drowned.

Honestly, putting a clear date next to a sovereign state is bound to stir an argument. I do not know what that was supposed to be good for. It's like painting a border around Israel and hoping that nobody will object. Ask a Glaswegian how old the UK is and he won't give you the 1066 date. Thistles, leeks, lions...there's bound to be a huge and pointless argument. And that's even before waking up the French. There might even be a war.

Here's what you don't get:
He's not talking about existence as a culture, he's talking about being recognized as an independent nation-state. (...)

Poland was divided between three Empires at the end of the 18th. Officially the Czar was Polish Head of State, but he didn't give the Poles any autonomy, and ran his bit of Poland as if it was merely another Oblast of Russia, so the Poles don;t count that as independence.

No, but they count the time before the partitions as independence. Poland existed as an independent and recognised state with the same name and in substantially the same geographical location with the same captial city for hundreds of years prior. What happened in 1918 was not 'gaining independence' and creating a new state as in the US in 1776, but re-gaining independence. The current Polish state considers itself a continuation of that earlier one, and no Pole would say that their country is 95 years old.

I'll give you the same capital. But the borders are completely different.

Most of what is now Poland has as strong historical ties to Germany as it does to Poland. Silesia, Prussia, and Pomerania alone are damn near 50% of the current Republic's territory and none of them was firmly in Poland's control at any time between 1400 and the Versailles treaty.

You're lumping various smaller duchies and principalities in the those territories together, when at various times (even after 1400) they owed allegiance variously and variably to Poland or various German states. For example the Duchy of Oswiecim was unambiguously and legally Polish from 1457. Trying to fit those regions into modern notions of nationalism doesn't work.

... if the Belarussians or Ukraineans decided to pick up the mantle of the old Republic it would be very hard for us poor foreigners to tell who was full of shit. Belurussian ethnicity was as much a core of that old Republic as Poles, and they ended up with more of old Poland's territory then new Poland did.

In terms of area only, not in terms of population or major cities (except Lviv and Vilnius). As for ethnicity, yes, Belorussian or Ukrainian or Lithuanian ethnicity was very much part of the Commonwealth, but so was Polish (as in, the Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia etc) ethnicity, and Polish was the dominant language in all those areas for many years.

Keep in mind that the rules of this are clear: independence is your birthday. If we let anybody change it we have to let everybody change it.....

In other words polish history gave them a choice. They could choose to interpret Congress Poland as a legitimate Polish government co-equal to the Czars and therefore a constant continuation of the prior government, or they could look really young in country-age lists compiled by Americans who haven't really put in the effort to understand their history. They chose the latter.

Sorry, but the "rules" are being applied arbitrarily. After WW2 the Provisional Government declared the Vichy governemnt unconstitutional and illegal, meaning there was no continuation of prior government from 1940 until 1944. Why is the "birthday" of France not counted as 1944? Or Or if you prefer 1789, when the Ancien Regime was toppled? Celebrated to this day. Or Austria, also brought into being as an independent state in 1918 from what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and if the United Kingdom is to be counted as different from England and not a continuation of it, then logically the Austro-Hungarian Empire is also not the same as pre-Empire Austria and not the same as post-Empire (post 1918) Austria. Or if, instead, you go by "Independence Day" Austria would "date" from 1955:

They count the age of the current country. Been conquerored for half a millenia and only recently later got lose again, you are a young country Greece. Existed as geograpic feature for millenia but only recently became a country you are young too Germany and Italy.. Seriously why are you surprised of Germany and Italys age?? They are very young countries formed from a random selection of smaller states.

Both Italy and Germany didn't form from randomly collected smaller states. All states that joined Germany in 1871 were either member states of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 or at least had predecessors that were. Similarly with Italy. All states that joined Italy in 1861 were on the territory of the Kingdom of Italy as founded by Odoacer in 476 AD.

The actual Poland is really 95 years old, after the Polish Rzeczpospolita was dissolved in 1791 and the parts were distributed between Prussia, Russia and Austria. They only rejoined in 1918. Same with Germany. The first ever state which had "Germany" (or Deutschland) in its name was founded in 1949. There was always some idea about a unified Germany, but never an actual state, until 1871 the German Reich was founded (which still wasn't officially called Germany). Greece was not a sovereign state since the

I was not saying to do away with the mean altogether. What I'm saying is that the median is a much more informative statistic than the mean for non-Gaussian distributions. You're trying to get at the "typical" value for a population, but for strongly non-Gaussian distributions the mean is not actually very typical.

A good example would be salaries for a whole economy, or yearly income for musicians. The mean will be skewed by a small population of individuals with a very high income, giving you a misleadingl

Serb independence on this list is dated to whenever the current Serb government dates it's independence. Serbs date that to the dissolution of Yugoslavia seven years ago, so it's seven. It's not necessarily accurate (the difference between "Yugoslavia" and "Serbia" is a lot smaller then the Serbs claimed), but it is rigorously fair.

If you want a 100% accurate, perfect list then why don;t you do some of this research yourself. There's only 200 or so countries, and you'll only offend a B

if you're looking for average lifespan of a country, you have to actually look at countries that are no longer around. since ones that are alive you have no idea of how long they will continue to be alive. maybe one day, maybe a thousand years. if all the countries you sampled are still around then your sample size - as far as survival time is concerned - is effectively zero. you could assume an exponential probability distribution and try to compose a maximum likelihood estimate based on they all will live longer than they have been around, or on average their expectation is twice as long as they've been around, but still... why make such extrapolations when you can use actual samples from countries that are no longer around?

I do not see that people are primarily defined by what government they're under. Human relationships are less bounded, more amorphous, more interwoven than the neat lines and branches nationalism would imply.

Come on! The Assyrian people didn't go away because their empire ended; there's an identifiable group of them living today. The local past didn't disappear when nations like modern Germany and Italy united out of their former parts. People don't sever their family relationships and traditions at the

Did you assess the US based on the beginning of the Civil War, or today's current date? Because legally, it was a different country - a different government rulers, different governmental rules, and with different laws - enforced upon the losers of the war by those who won.

On the other hand, this site lists Austria as 1037 years old, Hungary as 1012. Please remind me, what country did that guy named Franz Joseph rule?

That would be the Austro-Hungarian EMPIRE.

In case you hadn't heard, an EMPIRE is a group of countries with a common ruler.

In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria and Hungary were countries that were PART of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Along with pieces of Germany and Italy and bits of various Balkan places...

Depends what definition of the word "country" you use. Indeed, it can mean both "sovereign state" and merely a "political entity". Other than for the United Kingdom, though, the latter usually bears other names, like "state" or "land".

So, we have three levels here:* a fully independent, sovereign state (USA, Germany, United Kingdom, in the past the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)* a division with its own laws and parliament: California, Texas, Bavaria, Scotland* a voivodship/province/etc

(Personally, I prefer the "sovereign entity" definition, so would include both UK and Austro-Hungarian Empire as countries, but a project like this really ought to apply some degree of consistency, so should have either both or neither.)

Aren't they forgetting the Anschluss in 1938? Do we the independence date for France to 1944, when the Germans were kicked out and they got control of their coutnry back? When do you set a date for Italy? Unification in 1870, or with the establishment of the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier? How old is China? Was it established in 1949, 1919, 216BC or 2100 BC? How old is Egypt? 3 days, two years or 5000 years?

if we're going by the standard used in the articles sources.. it's silly that usa isn't counted from the end of the civil war. heck, many countries have ruler lineages going further than the supposed age of the country..

In terms of the current "regime" in England, it could be best called the form of the government following Oliver Cromwell's republic [wikipedia.org]. That was 1660, thus only 353 years even if you count just England and not the whole UK.

That is still a pretty good run under the current "constitution" which exists in that part of the world. Most other countries have a much shorter period of time, and even America went through a couple major government changes in that same length of time.

...and got conquered again by William in 1689 who ousted the legitimate sovereign. And after the Stuart line finally died out was ruled by Germans.

England/the UK doesn't have a linear history. It's a squiggly line that breaches several dimensions and branches all over Europe. As history tends to do. A jolly mess it is. If you want to properly fuxor your brain do the same for the same time frame for Germany.

And we returned the favour by owning more of France than the French for over 300 years. Not content with that we then had the largest empire the world had ever seen. Not bad for a little island of drizzle.

Huh? America changes "adminstrations" about every eight years (with the potential to have them change every four.... or more frequently due to "other events"), but that isn't changing governments except in the sense like the British get a new "government" each time they get a new Prime Minister. It is even less so, as often Speakers of the House (the most equivalent of the House of Commons in the USA) survive past individual presidents and have their own rotation of power. Add to that changes in the Chie

Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.

Frankly that guy armed with Wikipedia and Excel either had a lot of balls or was blissfully unaware into what kind of mess he just stepped. Just wait until the French wake up in the morning.

Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.

England was not `conquered' by the Netherlands, an essentially bloodless coup was orchestrated by the Stadtholder William of Orange and protestants in the English Parliament to oust James II and replace him with William and his wife Mary (James II;'s daughter and therefore heir) as co-ruler. Both countries remained independent, with only personal union of the monarch (William) linking them.

an essentially bloodless coup was orchestrated by the Stadtholder William of Orange

Bloodless? There's a bunch of corpses buried in Reading that might well dispute that claim. Aye, and not to mention, me laddie, there's a whole lot o' Scots and Irish who will happily kick you in the nadgers for suggesting it was bloodless.

In any case, the fact that the people of England supported the invader doesn't mean it wasn't a foreign invasion, unless you're hopelessly devoted to the myth that England hasn't been invaded since William.

OT: My other half is a music/arty promoter type person and last year she was at Edinburgh Fringe chatting with someone who does a similar job in the US. She was telling this person about a recent gigs she'd put on in an Arts centre, a converted medieval church. ~Said person remarked words to the effect "Holy crap, your venue is older than my country!"

What is left of The Roman Empire is now called Liechtenstein. This is not a simple history, in fact it is complex and based on many old treaties that have full legal status even today, some are more then 500 years old. For instant, the country of Prussia existed from the year 1525 to the year 1947. I live in the part of Denmark that was once a part of Prussia, it did go under control of Denmark in the year 1920.

Yeah. If a country merged with some other country, or was temporaly invaded by another, then for these guys its as if this country did not exist beforehand. I mean just look at the Iberian Peninsula or France. The borders have been mostly stable for yonks and look at the claimed age. Just pathetic.

So dear US readers... Please explain to me why the UK is as old as the Act of Union while you did not measure the age of your country starting with the annexation of Texas or some other quaint date like that.

Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.

If latest unification is a criterion, the modern United States of America is only 54 years old, and should we really be counting Great Britain, since it's an EU country and the EU added a new country this week.

Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.

You also didn't pay attention in that class. The UK is not a country rather it's an amalgamation of individual countries. The name is not the "United Kingdom" it's the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland whom each have their own parliaments. It's like saying the US is only as old as NATO because it's a member of NATO.

I would have pointed this out nicely, but you acted like such an pompous arse (yes, propper spelling, there is an R in there, an ass is a donkey) I couldn't help myself.

P.S. The Queen, her majesty Elizabeth the second, being a polite, proper and fair person would wish you and you nation well on this day of celebration, despite your ignorance and disrespectful attitude.

You know how the Korean War, although ostensibly a war between North and South Korea, was basically a war between the US and China? Yeah. The American Revolution was that, with Britain and France. Of course, our "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" school system and remnants of Manifest Destiny keep most people from thinking of it in those terms, but yeah, that's how it was. A small American rebellion persisted long enough to sap the British strength until some heavy aid from France was enough to shove them out of a war they no longer really cared for.

Americans will accept a daily commute of 100 miles (50 miles a way), and won't understand why you didn't drive 150 miles out of your way to see them on the holidays. After all it's only two-and-a-half hours.

OTOH things that happened even 50 years ago (like the Civil Rights Movement) are ancient history.

Actually it was Norman, which isn't quite the same thing. The Normans spoke French but were Norsemen who'd settled in Normandy only a century or two before the Norman Conquest. Even the name "Norman" derives from "Norse".

If you ask a Pole when his country became independent he will tell that it was when the last King of Congress Poland (aka: the Czar) fell in 1918. If you ask a Swede when his country became independent he'll give you 1523, when the Danes were thrown out. The Chinese, Japanese, and French all claim direct lineage to states founded a long time before that.

You can argue that the French and Chinese are full of shit, or that the "age of a country" like Poland can't accurately be calculated by it's independence day. You cannot argue that the author used a double-standard.

It is true, because the Poland of the Rzeczpospolita until 1795 was a completely different state than the Poland today - even on partly different territory. There is for instance no continious tradition of laws and political institutions. Yes, the parliament of the Rzeczpospolita was called Sejm like the one today, but there is no continious political tradition of political parties between the old Sejm and the new one. There are for instance no remainings of the old Union of Lublin and the Polish-Lithuanian

It's not a troll, but it is clearly a July 4th inspired post. You know how I figured that out? By reading the following sentence;"Today is the United States' 237th birthday" No need to look at the post date.

This clearly is not a scholarly review of history, but a set of factoids directed at those who deride the U.S. as colonial rubes because their nation has only been around for a couple of hundred years. I've previously been surprised that Germany didn't even exist until the 1800's. Italy wasn't Italy

This is (almost definitely) a completely incorrect method to calculate "the average age of a country". The statistic provided here is the average age of (a sample of) countries existing at present, not the average age of countries that have existed. The difference might seem pedantic, but it has an immense effect on the computed statistic, because it excludes countries which existed briefly, no matter how recently. Some geographical locations have been through many, many sovereignties during the 158.78 years quoted. (This could be called left-censored data, because everything is excluded if it is not current at the moment of observation).

A better statistic might be the mean duration of countries that have existed over the last few centuries, which will slightly underestimate due to countries that will continue to exist (which could be called right-censored data).

A further improvement would be to take the median, because country life-spans are likely to have a strongly skewed distribution, perhaps approximating Pareto distribution, with a long, thin tail of a small number of very long lifespans.

The definition of a when a country was created is also hard to pin down.

Looking at what should be a simple answer is the United States. The easy answer is to count from July 4th 1776 when the political entity 'The United States of America' declared itself independent. But there are any number of problems with this approach:

1. The majority of the land that currently comprises USA was not part of it in 1776.2. The revolutionaries originally considered themselves 13 independent entities, loosely related by a group of common interests.3. The original government (The Articles of Confederation) was superseded by The Constitution.4. You could make some noise about the US Civil War, but the North never acknowledged the South's independence, and the rest of the objections would probably be covered by #15. OTOH, if you find #3 compelling, you could possibly argue that amendments to the constitution are a new governing document. The problem there is that it's hard to argue that, say, the passage of the 27th amendment represents a fundamental change in the governance of the US, but you could definitely make a case for the Reconstruction Era amendments (13-15) being a fundamental change. So if you accept this, then you need to have some kind of test to determine whether or not an amendment represent enough change to be considered a new government.

And those are just some of the issues at hand for ONE country on the list. Multiply that by 200, and you've got a real mess.